


world comes pouring through

by feralphoenix



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, Missing Scene, Spoilers - Pacifist Route
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-18
Updated: 2015-10-18
Packaged: 2018-04-26 22:42:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,655
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5023390
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/feralphoenix/pseuds/feralphoenix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alphys reunites with some old friends on the way home from taking care of business.</p>
            </blockquote>





	world comes pouring through

**Author's Note:**

> _(Perfection is not human._ – the opposite of a wound)

Two things happen, when you confess the truth:

Asgore gets down on his knees and sweeps you into his warm arms. He’s teary-eyed, is your good and softhearted king, and he holds you very carefully as he says, “I’m so sorry. I never knew.”

Your heart’s a kaleidoscope of conflicting desires: You want to stay here, safe; you’re happy to be comforted, after all the time you’ve had to carry this by yourself; you also feel like you don’t deserve his care after everything. And you know that wanting to hide against him where it’s safe isn’t good for you, anyway. You told the human you were going to try to be honest, and you want to make good on that.

Asgore releases you after a while. You take a deep breath.

“Yes, well,” says the queen, and you turn to look at her; she’s got a narrow-eyed, furrow-browed expression with her mouth thin and squinched off to one side like she’s either very angry or trying not to smile. “You are also fired. It is enough that you perpetrated such experiments to begin with, but hiding what you have done has only made everyone miserable in the end, including yourself. We cannot have you in the position of Royal Scientist any longer.”

“Ah,” says Asgore, cringing a little. “Don’t you think that is a little extreme?”

You take a deep breath. “I-it’s okay,” you tell them. “I-I was p-prepared for this when I decided to tell you the truth. I think it’s for the b-best like this.”

This makes both of them look at you—the queen with her eyebrows raised, the king still apologetic. “Are you sure of this?” Asgore says.

“Yes,” you say, and take another deep breath. You attempt to stop wringing your hands. “Actually, I think I feel better now.”

The hell of it all is that you aren’t lying. Your whole body feels much lighter. You even feel like you’re standing straighter now.

You’re done pretending. You don’t want to be ashamed anymore.

 

 

Your body is still light as you make your way back to the hotel—high on the catharsis of returning all the amalgamates to their families. It’s a feeling only slightly marred by the guilt that no one has blamed you, but the queen at least saw fit to punish you, so that’s all right.

But the holiness of doing the right thing can only get you so far when you’re also interpersonally exhausted and just want to get back to Undyne and the others. So you keep your head down, look at the ground, and walk as quickly as your tired claws can manage.

What you’re not expecting: A cheerful, high-pitched voice that singles you out—that sounds _overjoyed_ about it, even.

“Oh my _god,_ Alphys? Girl, is that you?”

You nearly jump out of your lab coat. Your head whips up, and you hastily push your glasses up on your snout, trying to place the source of the voice, why it sounds so familiar—

There are a pair of teenage girls leaning against the hotel wall, each of them with a can of spray paint in their claws (there’s a graffitied sign on the brick behind their backs, still fresh). One’s tall, reptilian, gangly with elegantly coiffed hair and spindly claws; the other is round and feline, streaks of dye in her hair.

You think you’d recognize them, maybe, if they were both much smaller.

Hands shaking, you adjust your glasses again. “B-Bratty? Catty? Is that you?”

Catty jams her spray paint can into her overalls pocket and claps both paws to her cheeks, the better to scream elatedly. “Like, oh my _god!!_ It IS you! We haven’t seen you in for-EV-er!”

“I, um,” you’re saying, but she and Bratty are already speeding up the walkway towards you: Catty enfolds you in soft furry arms and lifts you up off the ground, where Bratty then elects to hug you both.

“How have you _been?”_ Catty trills, laughing. “Girl, we missed you! Like, we were just talking about how you needed to get out of your lab and live a little!”

“Wow,” you manage, and you start to laugh too. Relief, maybe, or sadness, mingles with the joy and the shame. “You two s-sure have, uh, grown up since I last saw you. A-and you finally got your hair done… You’ve been wanting to do that f-for a while, haven’t you?”

Catty squeezes you a little, laughing more, and you wheeze some as your breath leaves your lungs. “You actually remembered! Ooh, we should’ve got together way sooner than this. We missed you.”

“I, um,” you say, and make a belated effort to hug them back. “Y-you’re right. We really should have.”

“You sound kinda strange, hon,” Bratty says from above you; you crane your head backward to meet her beady yellow gaze. “You alright?”

“A little tired, t-that’s all,” you say. You want badly to have your claws free to wring them, or at least push your glasses up again, but your arms are occupied with your old friends and you can’t. “I, ah, there was some—some stuff, which is over now, and I was just going to head… back.”

The way Bratty looks at you gives you the crawling feeling that she understands more than you’re telling, but she doesn’t pry. This surprises you a little: She used to be more obvious in her nosiness back when it was just the three of you digging for trash together in the Waterfall dump.

“Too much socializing then, got it,” she says, and she steps back. Catty puts you down too, and loosens her embrace enough for you to get breathing room.

They really have grown up over the past few years. Just one more thing you were too busy wallowing in your own guilt and self-loathing to be there for.

You kick yourself a little, mentally. You’re going to change now. This is another bad habit that’s just got to go.

“Hey Alphys,” Catty says, and you do your best to not jump out of your skin. “I’ve got, like, the best idea ever. Wanna hear?”

“S-sure,” you manage somehow.

Catty winks at you, either oblivious to or gracefully ignoring your stumble. “We should go find a quiet place to hang out and catch up. Less people, less excitement. Like the old days. What do you think?”

You think you’d really just like to go back to your lab, put some comfort cartoons on, and make instant noodles. But even if you make an excuse to duck Bratty and Catty’s company, you’ll have to go back to see the king and queen and the others anyway. You brought the amalgamates back to their families; you came clean about what you did. Besides, Bratty and Catty are your friends. They’ve already shown you that they’re willing to make concessions for your comfort level.

“Okay,” you say at length, clenching and unclenching your claws to stay resolved. “I’ll text Undyne and the others to let them know where I am. It’ll be… g-good to catch up.”

Bratty and Catty exchange knowing smiles and high-five each other.

 

 

You stand in line to buy burgers and fries from a disgruntled-looking employee at the hotel, and take the elevator back down to the borderline between Waterfall and Hotland. All three of you sit underneath the scrolling electronic sign, unwrapping your food in comforting quiet. You eat your burger and watch the play of lights on the opposite wall, friends sitting on either side of you. It’s nicer than you were expecting.

Bratty and Catty fill you in on their exploits as shopkeepers since you saw each other last, gleefully recounting their sale of a very expensive bent key in particular. You listen, make some encouraging noises in the right places, and finish your fries.

“There’s n-not that much for me to tell,” you say once they’ve finished and are looking at you expectantly. “I’ve d-done… well, some things I’m not very proud of. Other than that I just sat in my lab and watched cartoons like a total loser. I did some, uh, kind of gross things to somebody I wanted to be friends with, and then they forgave me anyway. I learned that my friends really do like me and want to help me. That let me feel brave enough to do the things I’d been avoiding. So there’s… not that much to tell. B-boring, isn’t it?”

“I dunno, that sounds pretty rough to me,” says Catty, watching you with her round face propped on both paws. “I wouldn’t call it boring. But, like—we wanna be here for you too, okay? It’s pretty cool to get to talk to you again.”

You take your glasses off and wipe them on your lab coat. The world around you goes indistinct, fuzzy, soft-edged and safe. Then you put them back on.

“It’s nice to hear that,” you say, and smile some. “I was k-kind of worried that you guys would hold the radio silence against me.”

“Nah,” says Bratty, and you turn to watch her instead. “You’re here now. That’s what matters, isn’t it?”

You look down at your claws for a moment, then hold them up against your red face. “Wow. I-I guess it is.”

The moment lasts until Catty hip-checks you gently. You jump in place and squeak.

_“So,”_ she says, grinning. “Undyne. You texted her and all, right? That means there’s been progress, right? You _so_ need to spill all the juicy deets, like, right now.”

Despite yourself, you laugh.

“I-I’m not sure if it’s what you’d call _progress…”_

Bratty and Catty both scoot away from the wall to sit in front of you, resting their chins on their paws and claws, smiling that universal _go on_ smile.

You’ve missed this more than you let yourself realize.

“All right, all right. See, what happened was—”


End file.
